Podcasts out of order

Question

Regardless of what order I arrange podcasts in on my shuffle while it's connected to iTunes (for example, I generally order them according to type and date and put them at the bottom of the list, after the music), when I play my shuffle and when I reconnect it to iTunes all of the podcasts are seemingly randomly reordered and are at the top of the list, before the music.
I don't have the shuffle setting on, I've restored the shuffle multiple times, and my iTunes software is up-to-date.
Any suggestions?

Answer 1

{quote:title=kend0g187 wrote:} I don't get why they can't just download in the order you have them in your iTunes. Then everybody wins.{quote}
I don't get it either. It used to work that way. You would click the play order column and drag the files into whatever order we chose, not iTunes. I may prefer to hear some short podcasts, regardless of date, first, followed by the longer ones. Or my favourites first. Now we have no control.
If you wanted a different sort order, you could click on that column, then right-click the Shuffle icon and select Copy To Play Order to preserve that ordering when it played. For the life of me, I don't know what that menu choice does now.
It used to be that when the Shuffle's switch was in shuffle mode, it played music in a random order. We could always switch shuffle mode off to get podcasts played in the order we wanted. Seemed fair. The Shuffle's choice rules when switched on and we ruled when switched off. Now the Shuffle has full control.
As we have not been able to choose the play order for over a year, I can only conclude that this is the way Apple wants it to work. I've already sent feedback using this page on the Apple site:
http://www.apple.com/feedback/ipodshuffle.html
I strongly encourage everyone to let Apple know their views through that link rather than these forums as it isn't clear to me if these forums have any influence on Apple's decisions.